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Car park operators who have seen RingGo star in their offering this year include:
• The London Boroughs: Barnet, Brent and Southwark
• Local Authorities: Bristol, Cherwell, Hartlepool, Havant, Middlesbrough, North Cornwall, Oxford, Poole, Reading, Stockton and Test Valley
• Network Rail, South West trains and Chiltern Railways
• Town and City Parking

These new schemes increased the number of RingGo parking areas over the last year by nearly 90 per cent.

Usage of RingGo has grown even more rapidly, with more than two and half times the number of customers using the service this year so far, compared with the whole of 2007.

A Happy New Year..?
Predicting the future is always a black art, says Harry Clarke, Commercial Director for Cobalt Telephone Technologies, RingGo's parent company, but:

"In many of our implementations, pay by phone parking is now the more popular option and because of this we're starting to see a new strategic direction developing. Until now, car park operators have seen cashless payment as a way to offer credit and debit card payments cheaply, reducing the number of coins going through their machines and cutting the costs of collection, theft, vandalism and repair.

"Now, operators using RingGo realise it's popular with motorists, especially for regular commuters, and it can reduce their dependence on machines which may break or need replacing. So we expect to see an even bigger take-up of the system in 2009."

RingGo's top five predictions for the next year include:

• Increasing use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and cashless parking - offering digital parking with lower levels of human intervention
• County-wide roll outs of cashless parking - demonstrating joined up thinking between authorities at the local level and providing customers with a consistent service wherever they park
• An increase in the use of pay by phone parking to charge for and manage motorcycle spaces
• Thefts from machines moving from areas where cashless parking is offered, into neighbouring areas where it's not, and
• A withdrawal of some of the less successful cashless parking providers from the market.

Summing up, Clarke says "With all this happening, we expect 'RingGo All the Way' through 2009 and beyond!"